The Best Graphic Novels of 2010

It’s been a superb year for graphic novels–the shortlist of English-language books I’ve waved at someone at one point or another and said “you have to read this!” has about 30 titles on it. Nonetheless, end-of-year conventions demand narrowing it down to ten.

Note that this selection doesn’t include books that were mostly or entirely serialized in comic book form before they were collected as a single volume; if it did, Gilbert Hernandez’s gaudy, jolting High Soft Lisp, Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III’s superhero tour-de-force Batwoman: Elegy, and John Wagner and company’s barbed, blackly funny Judge Dredd potboiler Tour of Duty: The Backlash would all have been strong contenders. (And if you’re wondering where serial comic books are–well, a separate top ten of those will be showing up soon.)